Personal Life
A longtime supporter and former volunteer of London's Gay Switchboard help-line, it was at a 1982 benefit party for the organisation that he met Sue Brearley, the woman with whom he would eventually live and have two children, and later marry.
In the mid-1990s, when Robinson became a father, the tabloids ran stories about what they deemed as a sexual orientation change, running headlines such as "Britain's Number One Gay in Love with Girl Biker!" (The Sunday People). Robinson continued to identify as a gay man, telling an interviewer for The Guardian: "I have much more sympathy with bisexuals now, but I am absolutely not one." "Our enemies do not draw the distinction between gay and bisexual", he added.
In a 1994 interview for the Boston Globe, Robinson asserted, "We've been fighting for tolerance for the last 20 years, and I've campaigned for people to be able to love whoever the hell they want. That's what we're talking about: tolerance and freedom and liberty—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So if somebody won't grant me the same tolerance I've been fighting for them, hey, they've got a problem, not me." In 1996, Robinson released an album Having It Both Ways. On it he added a verse to "Glad to Be Gay", in which he sings: "Well if gay liberation means freedom for all, a label is no liberation at all. I'm here and I'm queer and do what I do, I'm not going to wear a straitjacket for you." In 1998 his epic about bisexuality, "Blood Brother", won three awards at the Gay & Lesbian American Music Awards in New York.
Peter Tatchell criticised Vanessa Thorpe's "Glad Not To Be Gay" article about Robinson in The Independent for suggesting the LGBT community would be "shocked and angered" that a gay man would "go straight". He stated: "Tom Robinson has behaved rather commendably, in my view. Ever since the beginning of his relationship with Sue, he has continued to describe himself as "a gay man who happens to be in love with a woman". Who could quarrel with that? I can't."
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